Atop Hell's Wings
by ImpalaLove
Summary: "Fire always crackles, whether or not it spreads. Winchesters always leave, whether or not they mean to." Spoilers through all of season 12.


**You guys. Season 13. It's almost here! I wrote this one out a while ago but then got too wrapped up in my multi-chapter story to get around to editing/fine-tuning it. Now seems like a good time to get it out there, seeing as the next season will be starting up in just a few short days.**

 **The style here is fairly experimental and probably a little confusing/vague, but hey, I'm trying something kinda new. Feel free to tell me whether or not it worked! Also, I have no clue where the title came from, but we're stickin' with it.**

 **Spoilers for the majority of season 12 (more specifically beginning at 12x14).**

* * *

Atop Hell's Wings

"Dean," Mary Winchester says.

He remembers when that was all he wanted to hear- his mother calling out his name. Even now, his lip almost twitches. He almost answers differently than he does.

"Mary," Dean says instead. And " _There's the door."_

He thinks maybe it might hurt just a little bit less this time if he's the one telling her to go. He thinks it won't sting as much if he doesn't wait to hear the slamming of the door.

He's wrong.

Fire always crackles, whether or not it spreads. Winchesters always leave, whether or not they mean to.

Dean thinks of a thousand grieving mothers, children taken by the monsters they hunted down too late. Mothers who lost their firstborns to a bloodless door, lost their soldiers to a splitting sea, a beach dyed red. He wonders if they are all still luckier than Mary.

* * *

Alleyways blend together like smears of paint on the canvas of an artist with no prior plan than simply to push one line after another into existence for the sake of doing so.

"I think we're lost," says Sam. And Dean thinks _when are we not_ and keeps walking. They find what they're looking for eventually, though it takes longer than it should.

 _You gave me what I needed most._

Sam's the one to kill it this time, and Dean tries not to be bitter about that.

 _I want to do the same for you._

"I think we're almost there," says Sam, on the way back. And Dean thinks _there's no finish line_. Picks up the pace anyway.

Spiderwebs cling to his insides, the echo of a disease called Cain's Mark. They glisten in the rain, but they do not break apart. Dean wonders if they ever will. Wonders how much of himself will be lost if they do. It is an ugly part of him to lose, but he doesn't have much left that remains beautiful. He's not sure he can afford to lose any of what's left, no matter how untouchable.

He thinks of Mary's long hair cut short, of how she's lost a little of the beautiful, too. Just from being here. With them. Him. Whatever.

 _I want to do the same for you._

Death is kinder than a lot of other things, and Dean has known it for a while now. Sometimes he misses their talks. Definitely misses the pizza.

Memory is kinder still, which is why Dean keeps the pictures next to his bed. He doesn't truly recognize anyone in them anymore, but it's nice to look. It's nice to try to remember.

"Dean?"

Sam treats his name like a prayer sometimes. Dean tries to answer the same way God always had (until the one time he finally answered), but he can't do it.

Dean answers on Sam's second try.

"I'm worried," says Sam. He pulls ribbons from his wrists like a magician, always different colors. Always different sentences, but it's the same trick. The same words.

 _I'm worried. I'm worried. I'm worried._

Aren't we all, Sammy? Aren't we all. Dean doesn't think he hears the real question, doesn't remember if he answers.

He leaves a voicemail. Calls her Mary.

It's a weird comparison, but she's starting to remind him of God. Chuck. Whatever.

No response from either.

* * *

The floorboards creak, almost imperceptible, and he knows it wasn't him and it wasn't Sam, so it has to be something else. He tells Sam to check downstairs, waits until his little brother's footsteps disappear before he finds it where he knows it will be, takes it down with one long swipe of a machete. He tells himself he's sent Sam the wrong way just to keep him safe, but Sam hasn't needed safe since Jess turned to ash, since a blade fell against his spine and kept right on going, since Hell, since Lucifer, since closing Hell's gates, since…. no.

Sammy still needs saving.

Doesn't mean that's the only reason, but it's one of them. It's the best one.

Sam has to call his name twice again, two prayers before Dean's grip on the machete becomes less than that of the death that holds tight to the thing on the floor. They deal with the mess: Winchester House Cleaning Services. The car ride feels shorter on the way back.

The bunker is big and empty.

* * *

Sam tries to scrub the concern from his own face with a swipe of one enormous hand, but Dean's pretty sure it will just rest there permanently now.

 _I'm worried. I'm worried. I'm worried._

Dean's worried too. He sleeps and he dreams those worries, though he doesn't remember them in the morning. There's an angry, red mark on his thumb where he held the coffee pot too long. Heat is so second nature, he doesn't notice it sometimes. Except that's a lie.

Dean notices everything unless he doesn't want to.

In last night's dream, Crowley doesn't break Michael's Lance. Cas chokes and chokes until he dies.

Dean remembers everything unless he doesn't want to. He keeps the best grudges that way.

He forgives Sam that way.

Sammy glows in the moonlight sometimes, the hollows of his skin echoing stardust in a way that reminds Dean of Hell's Trials; the transparency of his brother's bones.

"Dean?" Sam says.

 _I'm worried. I'm worried. I'm worried._

"I found us a case," Sam says.

Dean used to run most mornings, same as Sam. He stopped after Cold Oak, when he realized all that running wouldn't get him anywhere in time. But at least for now, everyone who's still alive has remained that way for another day.

"I found us a case," Sam says. They come faster than they ever have before, and Dean would be more curious about it if he weren't relieved to be on the road again.

Ghoul. Wraith. Siren.

Pieces of them cling to Dean, drips of paint down that same artist's canvas. He's not a very good painter and the picture doesn't look all that great. But it's difficult to make the blood spread once it's already begun to dry. He's just working with the wrong materials, is all.

Sam says "It's Mick Davies."

Dean contemplates his own anger, watches as it slides down around his ankles and pools into the floorboards instead of forcing its way up his throat like it usually does. He wants to think this means growth, but mostly it just feels like acceptance. Feels like _of course it's Mick Davies. Of course it is._

Dean rolls over and sits. Maybe if he makes like one of Crowley's Hellhounds and just obeys for once, Sam will stay.

"You could come with," Sam says, standing at the bus station on the way to the rest of his life.

"You could come with," screams the bullet in Dean's gun and Sam's unmoving lips, unbreathing chest.

"You could come with," says Sam, talking about going on one of those morning runs.

 _Follow me into the end of the world, and we'll bury ourselves so deep we don't have to come out the other side._

Dean follows after. Because it's Sam.

It's a petty thing to think, but he misses being in charge. He misses saying _screw destiny_ , and meaning it. Sometimes he even misses his year before Hell. Counting off his lasts, checkmarks down the list until the midnight bell would toll. At least he knew it would all mean something in the end.

Tied off with a pretty bow, complete with a puppy. Hellhound. Whatever.

* * *

Dean doesn't tell Sam this, but he feels it when the Alpha Vampire dies. He's driving, careening fast and dangerous because _Mom's in trouble, Mom's too far away_ (not Mary, never just Mary) and something inside him suddenly just _dies_. He's used to the feeling, it's happened before, but the abruptness of it throws him this time. Something breaks. Something hollow inside him opens up a little wider.

He remembers words he heard in Purgatory once, a monster's last before he'd slit it's throat.

"They say you came here willingly," the monster said (and Dean doesn't remember what kind of monster because it hadn't mattered). "They say you wanted another chance to kill all the things you'd already destroyed. They say you're the worst of us."

Dean feels something about the dead vampire on the floor with the hole in its head. He wishes he remembered if it was a Rugaru or a werewolf who'd said those words.

* * *

They redirect time so often that Dean wonders if it has any meaning anymore. Dean thinks about the last moments of Gavin McCloud, doomed to die at sea. He wonders if he would ever have the courage to board a ship bound to sink. Sam looks at him funny, and Dean realizes he's snorted out loud.

Everything sinks.

* * *

The light is red and the air is cold. He's strapped down like a piece of packaged meat, and he doesn't want to be as scared as he is. Sam finds him, same as always. Then he's just tired. And cold. Too damn cold.

Dean knows that if you drink enough, you never have to remember anything. Your brain won't store any memories to be dug up later. Nothing is saved. There's peace in that, he thinks, but also something a lot like sadness.

Sam drinks like he's trying to drown. Dean drinks like he's welcoming an old friend. The friend is fire, and he wouldn't mind being burned to the ground.

He's already covered in gasoline anyway.

* * *

"I was so lost," Cas says. His eyes flicker, too serene.

"Don't," Dean says, but the angel doesn't listen. Turns Dean's lights out with a brush against his forehead. He wakes on the ground hours later, Sam shaking his arm and patting his cheek.

"I'm not lost anymore," Cas had said. _I'm not lost anymore._

"I'm worried," Sam says without saying. That makes two of them.

* * *

July 4th, 1996: Sam and Dean Winchester lit a match and set the whole night sky ablaze, colors bursting into existence and sizzling overhead like stars exploding and expanding. It felt like it could last just as long as those ageless stars, especially when Dean relives it years later with fresh eyes and his old lighter in his pocket.

 _A blaze of glory,_ he thinks as he slumps against the wall of the bunker now. Their home has turned against them like everything else, intent to kill. Same as Mom.

The lack of oxygen is doing weird things to his thoughts, but he lets them wander.

If Dean ever had a Halloween like a normal kid, he's pretty sure he'd be Paul Newman. He's also pretty sure he'd eat half his pillowcase-full of candy before even making it back to wherever home would be in a scenario where this scene actually plays out. He thinks about that sometimes, if maybe he's living a thousand different lives in a thousand different universes, and in one of them, he gets Halloween without the real monsters.

Okay, yeah, he's read some Stephen Hawking.

* * *

 _Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?_

In the future, Dean imagines he'll refer to it as the movie line that saved their lives. They're talking about Butch and Sundance, about glorious endings, about those blazes of glory and all the times they've thought it was over, so of course that's where his mind's at. They don't have dynamite, but they have something else. Something better.

Thank you, Robert Redford.

* * *

Dean thinks of that July 4th again not too long after the grenade launcher blows a hole through the wall and his knee. He's trying to remember how small Sam must've been back then. Sam hasn't been small in a long time, but maybe it took until today for Dean to see his true height. To see the man his little brother has become.

"You're ready for this," he says, and he knows it to be true. Doesn't make it any easier though, to send Sammy off to war without him. They have always faced the end together, until they haven't.

Dean watches Sam walk out the door and prays that if there's a universe where his brother doesn't come back, this isn't the one.

Sam picked up a book from the library when he was in fourth grade, and he never got to return it because Dad had shoved them into the car early the next morning and taken off before anyone connected grave desecration with John Winchester. The book was about groups of animals and what they were called.

A herd of cows.

A cloud of flies.

A murder of crows.

An unkindness of ravens.

Dean wonders what a group like theirs should be called, besides maybe his patented and rarely used "Team Free Will."

 _Screw Destiny_ , Dean says to himself. And means it.

* * *

 _Screw everything that ever was_ , Dean screams to the God who has disappeared on them all over again.

Because the fight is over, and they've lost.

The fight is over, and Mom hasn't died or gone to Hell, but she might as well have.

The fight is over, and there is a set of giant wings scorched into the earth. Dean can't stop looking at the face those wings belonged to, gone slack in a way that screams finality after countless resurrections.

He is kneeling on the ground, swaying in the soft breeze as if it will topple him over. He is frozen in time, green blip against a black screen blinking in and out, moving nowhere.

If there is a Universe where all of this goes a different way, Dean swears he will tear apart the Earth searching for it.

But in this moment, Dean Winchester simply folds into the dirt and splinters apart.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading!**


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